Andy Duncan

NEWS: My new story, "A Diorama of the Infernal Regions; or, The Devil's Ninth Question," will be published in the young-adult anthology Wizards, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann, to be published by Penguin later in 2006.

I'm a fiction writer. My story "The Pottawatomie Giant" and my collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories both won World Fantasy Awards in 2001, and my novella "The Chief Designer" won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award in 2002. I've been nominated five times for the Nebula Award, three times for the World Fantasy Award and twice for the Hugo Award. My most recent books are Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, an anthology co-edited with F. Brett Cox (Tor, 2004), and Alabama Curiosities, an offbeat travel guide (Globe Pequot, 2005). I'm a
native of Batesburg, S.C., with an M.A. in creative
writing from North Carolina State University and an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. I'm a 1994
graduate of the Clarion West
writers' workshop in Seattle. I'm an active member of the
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of
America and the Horror Writers
Association and a supporter of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

"He is truly one of the brightest new hopes to appear on the SF scene in the past few years. . . . His voice is the true storyteller's voice, wonderfully crafted prose that reads as if it is rolling right out of his mouth extempore."
-- Rich Horton, Tangent Online

"One of the best fantasists to appear in the '90s."
-- Kari Tulinius, SFF.Net

"The Bazaar." (Part of the collaborative hypertext "The Dance of the Pavonine Leapers.") Gravitational Intrigue: An Anthology of Emergent Hypermedia, ed. Dimitri Anastasopoulos. Albany: The Little Magazine, 1999.

"The Premature Burials." Gothic.Net, September 1998. Rpt. in Beluthahatchie and Other Stories. Rpt. in Realms of Fantasy, April 2001.

"The Map to the Homes of the Stars." Dying for It, ed.
Gardner Dozois. New York: HarperPrism, 1997. Rpt. in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 9, ed. Stephen Jones. London: Robinson, 1998; New York: Carroll & Graf, 1999. Rpt. in Beluthahatchie and Other Stories.

Michael Berry, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, in his list of the year's 13 best sf/fantasy books: "It isn't often that a new writer of science fiction and fantasy is afforded the opportunity to publish a single-author story collection just three years after his first sale. Duncan has the literary chops to pull it off, though. . . . He writes movingly about the semi-forgotten figures of history and popular culture. . . . Duncan's short stories are marvels of setting and diction."

Publishers Weekly: "Andy Duncan's bold collection of short stories . . . is sure to spark interest in a promising new author."

Charles N. Brown, Locus: "If, like me, you're not normally a magazine reader (no time!), one of the thrills of collections is the discovery of a new author when that first collection appears. Beluthahatchie and Other Stories by Andy Duncan did that for me. Easily my favorite of the year."

Edward Bryant, Locus: "Relative newcomer Andy Duncan has not yet published a novel. If he published nothing but collections on a level with Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, his reputation would be assured."

Jonathan Strahan, Locus, in his list of the top five sf/fantasy books of the year: "Superb . . . One of the most exciting writers of short fiction I read all year."

Mark Wingenfeld, The New York Review of Science Fiction: “The stories cross genres from the fantastic to the horrific to the mainstream, but they are all written with Duncan’s graceful combinations of history and legend, wit and charm, a wonderful mix of Twain’s southern humor and Poe’s Southern Gothic. . . . All of his stories ring true, as if they had the whole weight of human history behind them. . . . Read these stories slowly or even out loud. . . . In these realms are wonders awaiting discovery by some bold adventurer who will chance the perilous trip to travel back with riches unimagined and tales untold. Keep on the lookout for Andy Duncan, for he is that adventurer.”

Joe Sutliff Sanders, The New York Review of Science Fiction: “His characters really are fascinating: a man who finds in executions not sin but redemption, a woman who dreams Hollywood dreams only to find them a pale imitation of love on a sinking ship, a man who can’t quite bring himself to open the door when his youth drives past his house night after night, even a George Patton who sees things that might not be there, or at least aren’t there yet. . . . This is an exciting book . . . because Andy Duncan’s imagination is an exciting place, and it’s a whole lot of fun to run around in there.”

John Clute, Washington Post Book World: "Duncan is an astonishingly thorough researcher into the smell and bricolage of the past . . . Throughout, Duncan shows an hallucinatory grasp of idiom, of place-setting tact, an actor's clarity at the rendering of voice."

Ellen Datlow, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: "A wonderful introduction to this young fantasist's short fiction."

Bob Devney, The Devniad: "The most exciting fantastic literature collection of 2000. Because besides all the reading pleasure it will provide you, it proves Andy Duncan is an assured, mature artist -- with his best work still ahead of him."

Mark Hughes Cobb, The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News: "There's no good name for what Andy Duncan does. Neither science fiction nor fantasy summons up the loamy riches of Beluthahatchie and Other Stories. . . . Duncan's imagination runs through that fertile ground previously tilled by artists such as Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson and Poe."

Gary S. Potter, Charleston (S.C.) Post & Courier: “Andy Duncan is one of those rare and wonderful writers who only come along once in a great while, an author whose impact is immediately felt and whose stories astound and amaze even the most critical reader. . . The stories are virtually unclassifiable . . . as powerful as any from Richard Powers or Rick Moody, T.C. Boyle or Steve Erickson . . . a bizarre blend of Faulkner and Hemingway with touches of Tennessee Williams and Kurt Vonnegut.”

Ernest Hogan, Science Fiction Weekly: "Like a grand tour with a time machine. And what a ride. . . . Duncan tells it all with a skill and subtle wit that make these stories irresistible. It's almost like reading one of Ray Bradbury's collections for the first time."

Darrell Schweitzer, Weird Tales: "This will be a formidable competitor for any of the Best Collection awards next
year. . . . Duncan is a major talent on the rise. Watch him.”

Michael Swanwick: "Andy Duncan is the first important new SF writer of the Millennium, a wild and unpredictable talent who's in perfect control of his material. This guy's going to be famous! Read him now, and avoid the rush."

Michael Swanwick, Locus: "Takes the hobo's paradise of the eponymous song and treats it seriously ... Yet another folkloric tour-de-force by a guy who is rapidly becoming recognized as the Howard Waldrop of his generation."

Rich Horton, Locus: "An engaging tale of a hobo who follows a friend away from that fabled land of plenty. ... Excellent ... Among the best of the year."

Steve Carper, Tangent Online: "Moderns have mythologies, too, as in Harry 'Haywire Mac' McClintock's story song 'The Big Rock Candy Mountain.' Fantasy writers just can't leave 'cigarette trees' and 'lemonade springs' be, and so Andy Duncan uses the song as a springboard for a Dantean vision of death and the ever-lasting longing for life. The story has the headlong rush of his Eastbound Train and some of the liveliest writing in the entire collection. Another laurel for his quickly-growing reputation."

Locus recommended reading list for 2002.

About "The Holy Bright Number"

Nick Gevers, Locus: "The [book's] brightest highlight ... Written in superb magic-realist style, this account of the amorous fling between a bluegrass troubadour and an enterprising prostitute succeeds (astonishing surreal music assisting) in summarizing beautifully the struggle in the soul of the Old South."

Sherwood Smith, Tangent Online: "Legends formed around Charlie Poole during his lifetime, wherever his banjo playing was heard; they linger, as does his music, in the rich humus of the southern tall tale. This Poole story, beautifully written, winds tightly together three potent elements: sex, music, and magic."

Fiona Kelleghan, The Washington Post: "A powerful, compulsively readable history of the Soviet space program through the eyes of Sergei Korolev."

Nick Gevers, Locus: "A short masterpiece of historical reconstruction and genre recomplication ... in staccato bursts of telling incident and incisive characterization ... There is the substance of a novel here, but Duncan has no trouble both skimming its surface and tracing its core in his packed 35 pages. It's a mark of Duncan's versatility and subtlety that he is all at once writing an historical novella, carefully and atmospherically true to period, an SF story, with much technological fascination and astronautical gung-ho, and a ghost story, which 'The Chief Designer' most strangely becomes in its closing pages. There is authentic genius here, irrepressible, surely enough to stimulate a tired genre to renewed life; it can only be hoped that Andy Duncan will not spread his wings too widely, and fly, as his Soviets could never quite do, clean out of SF's sight."

Jay Lake, Tangent Online: "Absolutely outstanding . . . a slow, subtle masterpiece. . . . This tale crystallizes a powerful myth of our times from the wreckage and sorrow of modern Russian history -- one to which readers the world over who care about science, space, and the upward progress of humanity should pay close attention."

Michael Swanwick, Locus: "A portrayal ... of the single most positive enterprise of the twentieth century -- the emergence of life into outer space. Shorn of the usual American jingoism, the beauty and tragic romance of that emergence is laid bare. There's only a smattering of genre stuff in here, but I haven't heard anyone complain yet. Folks who love science fiction will love this story, and for the right reasons."

Mark R. Kelly, Locus: "At the risk of being unfair to Baxter, this might be called a Stephen Baxter story with literary soul. Duncan's increasingly substantial and impressive work in recent years has brought him closer to contention for a major award, and this story should bring him closer still."

Mark Watson, Best SF: "Duncan's story has echoes of Arthur C. Clarke's best work in the sixties/seventies in the way he uses human emotion and commitment alongside the technical and political. Top notch."

Scott Klobas, Amazon.com: "My favorite story from this year's [Year's Best Science Fiction] collection ... A beautiful and moving story that brought tears to my eyes by its conclusion."

Mark R. Kelly, Locus: "The story has a dramatic power that surpasses any historical basis. The exchange between Willard and Houdini is the most riveting scene in anything I've read this month, and the simplicity of the fantasy device, providing the irresistible opportunity to relive a key event in one's life and change the course of history, only amplifies its powerful effect. Hugo and Nebula voters -- please take note."

Terri Windling, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: "Moving."

Rich Horton, Tangent Online: "This is a moving and sympathetic account of a once-famous man's life, set against subtle, well-backgrounded meditations on the place of racial and religious prejudice in American history. And most of all, it's a story: a quiet and reflective story, a story about character, but first of all a story."

Jay Lake, Tangent Online: "Once again Andy Duncan has written a story to touch our hearts. ... Unlike most of us, Willard gets a second chance, whether it is through Houdini's magic or the benevolence of the universe. He walks through the wall on Houdini's stage, and the wall in his own heart and ours."

Jonathan Strahan, Locus, in his list of the top five sf/fantasy stories of the year: "Easily among the year's best."

Reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (New York: St. Martin's, 2001).

Locus recommended reading list for 2000.

About "Lincoln in Frogmore" (2001 World Fantasy Award finalist)

Ellen Datlow, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: "Terrific."

Michael Swanwick, Locus: "It could be argued that this isn't fantasy. It contains no magic, other than the magic of its prose. But it sure feels like fantasy. And if we can accept the latest re-retelling of 'Snow White,' then surely there's a place for a tale that's less familiar and speaks a little closer to the heart."

Mark R. Kelly, Locus: "A showcase of Duncan's great southern voice, his skill at evoking a far away time and place."

Sherwood Smith, Tangent Online: "Exquisite ... The voice is beautifully rendered, the writing superlative. ... Duncan gives us the oldest form of fantasy, the legend, or folk tale: not just the childish folk legend of fireside entertainment but the one that has taken on enough mythic resonance to seem real."

Jay Lake, Tangent Online: "I read the story the week of 9/11, and it brought me to tears. ... This is an astonishingly simple story that manages to be astonishingly complex at the same time. It is a meditation on courage, freedom, and dignity in adversity ... Read it slowly, then show it to someone else. I did."

Mark R. Kelly, Locus: "It's especially amusing because the main characters are two sf icons: Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. Asimov and Heinlein worked at the Naval Air Experimental Station in Philadelphia in 1942, and the authors cleverly exploit that fact to spin a variation of the famous 'Philadelphia Experiment.' . . . But what's delightful is the bantering between the two main characters, mischievous Isaac and irascible Bob. Recommended."

Jeff Verona, Tangent Online: "Simultaneously an amusing alternate history yarn and a fond hommage to some of the giants of the genre . . . Longtime readers of the genre, those familiar with these great writers and the stories that have grown around them, will love this story . . . Immensely enjoyable."

Mark Wingenfeld, The New York Review of Science Fiction: "The story builds with theatrical precision all the way to the last wonderful sentence."

About "The Executioners' Guild" (2000 Nebula Award finalist)

Ellen Datlow, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: "Brilliant."

Michael Swanwick, Locus: "Line by line and page by page, the prose is riveting. It delivers that same strong kick as a Mason jar full of Ray Bradbury or Manly Wade Wellman at their best. . . . It evokes a bygone world poised on the brink of great change. A world of stunning everyday beauty and appalling everyday cruelty. A world, in short, very much like our own."

Jonathan Strahan, Locus: "A powerful examination of the meaning of our actions and of accepting the consequences."

Mark Wingenfeld, The New York Review of Science Fiction: "Duncan paints an incredibly vivid portrait of a small town and another time and also of the compassion that can be found in a profession that most of us would prefer not to think too much about."

Nebula Award nominee.

International Horror Guild nominee.

HOMer Award nominee, selected by the members of Compuserve's online science fiction forum.

Preliminary Stoker Award ballot.

Top 10 finisher (No. 9) in the 2000 Locus poll.

Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (New York: St. Martin's, 2000).

About "Fortitude" (2001 Nebula Award finalist)

John Clute, Washington Post Book World: "An absolutely word-perfect self-portrayal of General George Patton."

Faren Miller, Locus: "Dozois ... shows a talent for picking out excellent new writers: Andy Duncan's 'Saved' is a well-wrought tale of lovers on the Titanic -- no relation to the mega-bucks movie, this offers some spooky chills."

Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling (New York: St. Martin's, 1998).

Locus recommended reading list for 1997.

About "Beluthahatchie" (1998 Hugo Award finalist)

F. Brett Cox, The New York Review of Science Fiction: "Duncan puts one perfectly chosen word right after the other from beginning to end."

Carroll Brown, Tangent: "Duncan's characterizations are canny
and funny and touching ... And his ability to evoke Southern folk motifs
and styles, even the rhythm of the language, provides 'Beluthahatchie' with
an authenticity that lends a real joy."

Mark Wingenfeld, The New York Review of Science Fiction: "Duncan weaves . . . folklore into the story so well that the whole tale begins to take on a mythic quality."

Steve Eley, sff.workshop.critters: "Speculative fiction is becoming less formulaic all the time . . . Look at Andy Duncan's story 'Beluthahatchie' . . . To what standard formula does it adhere? I couldn't even think of a genre for it."

Hugo Award nominee.

Top 10 finisher in the 1997 Asimov's Readers' Award poll. (Tied at No. 8 with "Never Despair" by Jack McDevitt.)

Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction (New York:
St. Martin's, 1997): "A very
successful foray into Howard Waldrop/Terry Bisson territory ... wry,
funny, sweetly eccentric, and unexpectedly lyrical in places ... Judging
by it and by a few other Duncan stories I've seen in manuscript, I think
that Duncan could turn out to be a major talent in the making."

James J. Murray, Tangent: "An absolutely wonderful piece of
rural fantasy.... Duncan captures that bygone era beautifully, from the
Depression-era politics to the pompous radio announcer to the kids in the
street. This story alone is worth the price of admission to
Starlight, and Andy Duncan is definitely a talent to watch. 'Liza
and the Crazy Water Man' goes on my list of awards nominees right now."

Michael M. Levy, The New York Review of Science Fiction:
"Remarkable ... Duncan does a wonderful job with character and setting ...
Delightful ... I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more from Andy Duncan in
years to come."

Mark Wingenfeld, The New York Review of Science Fiction: "Duncan's voice is so clear and sure that if you listen carefully enough, like Alvin Pleasants, you just might be able to hear Liza's song."

Clinton Lawrence, Science
Fiction Weekly: "Outstanding."

Gary K. Wolfe, Locus: "Meticulously detailed ... A surprise and
a delight, not only because of the freshness of its setting, but because
Duncan is a genuinely new writer."

Mark R. Kelly, Locus: "An impressive first effort ... Memorable
characters and an impressive knowledge of the era and its music. Duncan
is certainly a young writer to watch."

Ken Brown, Interzone: "About half-way through reading this
story I realize that I am about to enjoy this anthology very much indeed."

Maureen Kincaid Speller,Banana Wings 5: "Andy Duncan goes a long way to showing that it's . . . entirely permissible to have fun with sf. . . . Reading this story, I was reminded of nothing so much as Manly Wade Wellman's 'Silver John' stories, which carried a similar sense of 'time and no-time' about them. . . . The wealth of detail, the sheer enjoyment of living that Duncan infuses into this story is a salutory reminder that we can discuss the serious without getting po-faced about it."